The FBI busted Silk Road, but not the ‘dark web’ behind it

“While it is possible that the FBI discovered some vulnerability in Tor that was not disclosed in the criminal complaint, it seems much more likely that this was old-fashioned police work. Dread Pirate Roberts made a number of errors, according to the FBI, including connecting to the Silk Road server using only a Virtual Private Network and not Tor and using an email address that contained his real name in a way that could be traced back to Silk Road. The police even intercepted a Silk Road package containing nine pieces of fake identification with the photo of the man they eventually arrested.”